Food you can get anywhere – but where will the music go?

NICOLE PESCE AT MY FLORIST CAFE

I’m just catching up with the news that My Florist Cafe has closed its doors. The restaurant at McDowell and Seventh Avenue was a popular hangout for Bohemians and the people who like to watch Bohemians for nearly 20 years. A story in the Arizona Republic Oct. 1 claimed the recent growth of downtown Phoenix had provided too much competition for My Florist, and maybe that was true apropos food and drink.

But where the heck can you find another Nicole Pesce? Pesce is the pianist who for the last ten years of My Florist’s existence lent it her fifteen fingers and a repertoire that comprised more than 10,000 pieces of music from Rachmaninoff and Gershwin to Radiohead and Coldplay. She’s the the only cocktail pianist I know who can somehow convincingly segue from the Beatles to Tchaikovsky to Super Mario Bros.

Word has it she’ll continue her afternoon gig playing high tea at the Ritz Carlton uptown, but I always think of her serenading post-theater and post-concert crowds with the sort of music that keeps the magic going late into the night. Let’s hope she finds a nighttime gig soon.

Click here for a YouTube video of Nicole’s take on “The Pink Panther,” posted about a year ago to my old blog at ShowUp.com.

– Ken LaFave

A hundred years of Arizona

Above: Composer JAMES DEMARS

The celebration has already begun, though the date won’t arrive for over a year. The state of Arizona turns 100 in 2012 – Feb. 12, 2012, to be specific – and the Arizona Commission on the Arts as already commissioned two new musical works to commemorate the occasion. A new choral piece by James DeMars, of Tempe, and a new band composition by Sy Brandon, of Cottonwood, have been unveiled and are available for performance.

DeMars, this year’s artist-winner of the  Arizona Governor’s Arts Awards, I have written about in liner notes for the CD of his Piano Concerto and in a rave review of his Violin Concerto for The Arizona Republic. Brandon is new to me, but I intend to find out more.

You can download pdfs of the Centennial scores, and listen to MIDI mock-ups of them, here. What an amazing convenience it is to be able to look over scores online! On the other hand, MIDI mock-ups never do a score anything near justice, so let’s hope for performances soon.

New music is the best way to celebrate social and political milestones. Can we expect an announcement soon from The Phoenix Symphony?

– Ken LaFave

Lenny’s Mercedes

Have you seen the new Mercedes-Benz commercial that includes a brief clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting? The ad is made of a series of clips of people with arms raised “in triumph.” Sports figures are also pictured.

I can’t say I really knew Lenny, though I met and talked with him on a few professional and personal occasions. But I can’t help but wonder at his association with a German car. His sensitivity to the history of the Holocaust was keen. While he dismissed Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana on musical grounds (he once called it “gilded shit”), those who knew him said part of his dislike was Orff’s connection to the Nazis.

Everybody’s different, but I have several Jewish friends who would never buy a German car. And then there’s Sarah Silverman’s bit, “Jewish people driving German cars.” (Warning: Strong language.)

Your thoughts? Any readers with an informed guess as to whether Bernstein would have approved? Or not?

– Ken LaFave

A world of music/The “C” Word

In case you blinked and missed it, the Valley last spring became home to the largest collection of world musical instruments in…well, the world. The Musical Instrument Museum (The MIM), on Tatum Blvd. just south of the 101, is an amazing place to spend a day viewing and listening to instruments created by peoples all over the globe.

And you will need a full day, or most of one. It’s astonishing to see how many variations cultures can make on the same idea – how varied are the plucked string instruments of, say, India, Korea and Sweden, or the flutes of Africa and Native America. The audio machine you carry with you at the Museum automatically plays clips of whatever instrument you are viewing, so you hear the kora or the gamelan or the grand piano it as you see it.

Experiencing these different instruments with their range of tunings and timbres prompts the question, “Does what people hear in their heads determine how a culture makes and tunes its instruments? Or do the instruments get made, shaping how the people hear?” Unanswerable, I suppose; a relative of nature-or-nurture.

There’s a room where you can see one of Eric Clapton’s guitars and the piano on which John Lennon wrote “Imagine.” For classical geeks, there’s Lang Lang’s piano and one of Lenny Bernstein’s batons – as close to an “instrument” as a conductor might have. There’s also a hands-on room where my sons and I recently spent probably way too much time playing harps, drums, and that favorite of old-time horror movies, the Theremin.

If you haven’t been there yet, put a visit on your must-do list.

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Congratulations to The Phoenix Symphony and Phoenix Theatre for daring to use the “C” word: Collaboration. The Symphony and PT united to produce a semi-staged version of The Music Man last week, and they’ve just announced they’ll kick off each of the next two seasons with similar co-productions.

Way to go! The days of trying to get the biggest piece of a limited audience pie are gone! Gone! (“Gone with the hogshead, cask and demijohn…” Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.) It’s been replaced with the need for arts groups to work together to bring more folks under the arts & culture umbrella.

More, please.

– Ken LaFave